Asian americans in american cinema images and counter images of the model minority

UNIVERSITÉ SORBONNE NOUVELLE - PARIS 3 UFR LANGUES, LITTÉRATURE, CULTURES ET SOCIÉTÉS ÉTRANGÈRES DÉPARTMENT : MONDE ANGLOPHONE Mémoire de Master 2 Recherche - Etudes Anglophones ASIAN A

UNIVERSITÉ SORBONNE NOUVELLE - PARIS 3 UFR LANGUES, LITTÉRATURE, CULTURES ET SOCIÉTÉS ÉTRANGÈRES

DÉPARTMENT : MONDE ANGLOPHONE

Mémoire de Master 2 Recherche - Etudes Anglophones

ASIAN AMERICANS IN AMERICAN CINEMA: IMAGES AND COUNTER-IMAGES OF THE MODEL

MINORITY

TRIỀU Nguyễn Quỳnh Như Sous la direction de M COHEN et Mme THOLAS

Septembre 2019

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENT i

TABLE OF CONTENTS ii

INTRODUCTION .1

CHAPTER 1 REPRESENTATIONS OF ASIANS AND ASIAN AMERICANS IN AMERICAN CINEMA: AN OVERVIEW .9

1.1 Dominant cinematic representations of Asians and Asian Americans .9

1.1.1 Orientalism: Asians and Asian Americans as the “Other” and perpetual foreigners .10

1.1.2 Yellow face 11

1.1.3 The yellow peril .13

1.1.4 Gender and sexuality .15

1.1.5 The model minority .20

1.2 The Asian American independent cinema .20

1.3 Conclusion of the chapter .22

CHAPTER 2 THE MODEL MINORITY MYTH 24

2.1 The model minority myth .24

2.2 The model minority myth in American cinema .28

2.3 The model minority and the yellow peril .30

2.4 Counter-visions of the model minority .31

2.5 Conclusion of the chapter .31

CHAPTER 3 IMAGES OF THE MODEL MINORITY 32

3.1 Overview of the movie corpus 32

3.2 Images of the model minority .35

3.2.1 Excellent students .35

3.2.2 Nerdy, robotic, and physically weak students 39

3.2.3 Well-paying professions and great capacity 43

3.2.4 Economic success .47

3.2.5 Law-abiding citizens 62

3.3 The model minority, the yellow peril, and the racial hierarchy 62

3.4 Conclusion of the chapter .66

CHAPTER 4 COUNTER-IMAGES OF THE MODEL MINORITY 68

4.1 Problems faced by Asian Americans 68

4.2 Laid-back attitude 78

4.3 Crime 82

4.4 Conclusion of the chapter 86

CONCLUSION 87

APPENDIX 90

Historical and cinematic milestones of Asian Americans 90

BIBLIOGRAPHY 95

FILMOGRAPHY .100

INTRODUCTION Background to the study

We now live in a world where media has become more and more pervasive in every area

of life Our contemporary society is one of “hyper-information”, in which media, in an increasingly significant way, contribute to our ways of making sense of ourselves as well as of our relationships with others (Ono and Pham 3).1 Indeed, media play crucial roles in our construction of mental images of lands, events, and people with which and whom we have little, if any, first-hand knowledge and material interaction Thanks to media, particularly cinema, a millennial who has never stepped out of the United States can still get an idea of the

Vietnam War through such movies as Apocalypse Now (1979), Platoon (1986), and Born on

the Fourth of July (1989) Also, a person who has little real contact with people of Asian

descent can still form images of them, watching movies from classics as Breakfast at Tiffany‟s (1961) to contemporary blockbusters as Crazy Rich Asians (2018) Whether such images

correspond to the reality is uncertain, and that is where studies on the issue of cinematic representations step in

But why do we need to scrutinize cinematic representations? In other words, why do they matter? First and foremost, it is worth noting that movies are discourses, i.e constructed objects of signification rooted in a specific social environment (MacDonell 1-2).2 As all discourses, their meanings are derived from the institutions, both within and outside the film industry, and the historical, social and cultural circumstances surrounding their production.3Cinematic representations, especially those concerning race, class, and gender, are closely linked with social power relations: they reflect, construct, and reinforce ideologies concerning power and identity, which, as Gramsci pointed out, have to do with hegemony within any

certain society in any given time.4 What we see in movies, however, may be either distortions

or merely subjective snapshots of a broader life (Ono and Pham) Indeed, media produce the

illusion of proximity, by which people imagine they are close to and thus know one another

while in fact, there is little, if any, material contact among them.5 As Benedict Anderson argued, “communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style

in which they are imagined” (6).6 With the pervasion of cinema, especially American movies, cinematic representations arguably make significant contributions to our process of forming and shaping mental images of ourselves and of others

When it comes to cinematic representations of Asian Americans in particular,

“shockingly few books and articles have been written about Hollywood‟s treatment of Asia and Asians.”7

The remark of Gina Marchetti, author of the 1993 celebrated book Romance

and the “Yellow Peril” on the depiction of interracial relations in the American popular

cinema, is still true today Since then, there have certainly been more works of research on images of Asian Americans in American cinema, but they are without doubt limited in number This fact, in turn, is linked to the fact that Asian Americans have not been sufficiently represented in the media, including the cinema Indeed, although composing 4.5% of the U.S population, Asian Americans occupy less than 3% of film, television, and commercial parts Further, only 1.7% of lead roles across the mainstream entertainment are performed by them.8

4Gramsci, Antonio Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed and trans Quintin Hoare and

Geoffrey Nowell-Smith New York: International Publishers, 1971

5 This argument is developed from Benedic Anderson‟s ideas expressed in his book Imagined

Community According to him, all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face

contact are imagined because the members of a certain communities never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, but each of them has in mind the image of their communion (6)

6 Anderson, Benedict Imagined Community: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of

Nationalism New York: Verso, 1983

7

Marchetti, Gina Romance and the “Yellow Peril”: Race, Sex, and Discursive Strategies in

Hollywood Fiction Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993

8

Yuen, Nancy W “Performing Race, Negotiating Identity: Asian American Professional

Actors in Hollywood.” Asian American Youth: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity, edited by

Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou, Routledge, 2004, pp 251-267

In a broader frame, Asian Americans are often left out from important debates and discussions, where race relations are too often seen in terms of a black-white paradigm.9

In such a context, the current study is hoped to be not only a work in a field which has yet to be thoroughly cultivated but also a call for attention to the question of cinematic representations of Asian Americans

Those reasons, together with my own interest in cinema and Asian Americans, prompted

me to do research on representations of Asian Americans in American cinema The focus is put on the model minority myth, a soil which has been scarcely cultivated by studies on cinematic representations of Asian Americans

Definition of “Asian Americans”

Before any analysis and arguments are made, it is crucial to establish a working definition of Asian Americans The term “Asian American” was coined by Yuji Ichioka at the San Francisco State University Third World Strike in 1968.10 That reflects the political roots

of the term, which, indeed, continues to be descriptive of a particular epistemology that challenges racism and seeks empowerment and democratic power relations (Ono and Pham)

At the same time, it has become a simple term of classification used in official forms, for example standardized testing and even the U.S Census.11

“Asian Americans” is a panethnic term; it refers to all people of Asian descent in the United States Their ethnicities run from “Cambodian to Indian, Pakistani to Indonesian,

9

Wen, Edith, Chen, Chu, and Yoo, Grace J “Introduction.” Encyclopedia of Asian American

Issues Today, edited by Wen-Chu Chen and Grace J Yoo, ABC-CLIO, 2010, pp xvii-xxi

10 Kim, Ryan “Yuji Ichioka, Asian American Studies Pioneer.” SFGate, 12 Sep 2002,

11 “Who Are Asian Americans?” Center for American Progress, 28 Apr 2015,

Rao, Sonia “The term „Asian American‟ Was Meant to Create a Collective Identity What Does That Mean in 2018?” The Washington Post, 30 Jul 2018,

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-term-asian-american-was-meant-to-

Nepalese to Thai.”12

Such people share experiences forged in contact with American culture, policies, and history Hence, scrutiny of cinematic representations of Asian Americans may technically encompass all such sub-groups Nevertheless, in reality, American cinema, especially Hollywood, has favored narratives concerning groups who have been in the United States in larger numbers and for a longer period of time, namely Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese (Kim; Marchetti; Okada) On the one hand, this focus is reflected in the movies mentioned in the current study, which, accordingly, does not aim to, and also cannot, cover all groups of Asian Americans On the other, interestingly, three of the movies chosen

for close analysis feature less represented groups, namely Indians (in Harold & Kumar Go to

White Castle), Hmongs (in Gran Torino), and Singaporeans (in Crazy Rich Asians) It is

worth mentioning, however, that the two latter are closely linked to the Vietnamese and the Chinese respectively

Purpose of the study, research questions, and organization of the thesis

The current study examines the ways in which American cinematic narratives work to create, sustain, and challenge culturally accepted notions of Asian Americans as the model minority Exploring this subject, it endeavors to answer the following questions:

1 How are Asian Americans represented as the model minority in American cinema?

2 Are Asian Americans also portrayed in ways that contradict the model minority

stereotype? If so, how are they pictured?

The first research question concerns stereotypical images of Asian Americans as the model minority In order to answer this question, analyses will be performed on the corpus movies in ways that show how the plot, the characterization, and the iconography contribute

to the cinematic construction of Asian Americans as members of the model minority In contrast, the second research question deals with images which are opposite or subversive to the stereotype, the underlying hypothesis being that such images do exist In other words, it explores how Asian Americans are also projected on the screen with characteristics not conforming to the model minority myth

12

Okada, Jun Making Asian American Film and Video New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 2015, p 5

These two questions are addressed respectively in Chapter 3, Images of the model

minority, and Chapter 4, Counter-images of the model minority Before that, Chapter 1

provides an overview of representations of Asians and Asian Americans in American cinema while Chapter 2 discusses the emergence, persistence, and consequences of the model minority myth in both American society in general and American cinema in particular These two first chapters seek to prepare the reader with background knowledge required for better understanding of representations of Asian Americans with visions and counter visions of the model minority

It is important to underscore that when movies are regarded as part of the larger social formation, they should be understood in relation to other discourses involving race, ethnicity, class, gender as well as other pressing social and political concerns Thus, throughout the study, discussions of Asian Americans‟ images in movies are more often than not accompanied by facts and opinions concerning Asians and Asian Americans in the West in general and in the U.S in particular

Movie corpus

The corpus for close analysis is constituted by seven movies, namely The Joy Luck Club (1993), The Wedding Banquet (1993), Better Luck Tomorrow (2002), Ethan Mao (2004),

Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004), Gran Torino (2008), and Crazy Rich Asians

(2018) These movies spanning from the 1990s to the 2010s, the diversity in time of production would bring us a more comprehensive view of representations through time, and hopefully a sense of evolution

It is also worth nothing that these movies all have Asian Americans as central characters, which helps build a corpus concrete enough for thorough and detailed analysis of

representations of Asians and Asian Americans The only exception, a minor, though, is Gran

Torino, in which white American Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) is of more focus than Hmong Thao (Bee Vang), the second leading character Nevertheless, its attention directed to Asian Americans, Hmong Americans in particular, is considerable

The chosen movies do not fit into a certain genre; rather, they range from comedies and dramas to crime-drama films Although they are all well-known (to different extents, though),

not all of them are considered as belonging to the mainstream cinema In other words, some of them, basically those directed by Asian Americans, are independently made A combination of mainstream and independent productions will demonstrate more wide-ranging representations

of Asian Americans

Literature on Asians and Asian Americans in film

Literature on Asian and Asian American film representation has flourished since the late 1960s and early 1970s, its focus being stereotypes as ideological phenomena, and institutional aspects of racism (Xing 53).13 Besides the movie corpus as the primary sources, the current study refers to works belonging to this body of literature as its secondary sources The most

important references include Gary Okihiro‟s Margins & Mainstreams: Asians in American

History and Culture, Kent Ono‟s and Vincent Pham‟s Asian Americans and the Media, and

Gina Marchetti‟s Romance and the “Yellow Peril‟: Race, Sex, and Discursive Strategies in

Hollywood Fiction.14 As the titles themselves suggest, the first book concerns historical and cultural issues at large while the others concentrate on the issue of representation Okihiro‟s work offers provocative sections on how Asia has been regarded as one of the “Other” of Europe, and then of white America Moreover, the prominent Asian American author discusses the connection between two seemingly unrelated concepts about Asian Americans, namely the yellow peril and the model minority This question is also addressed by Ono and Pham, who are interested in how the link is found in the media, including film In fact, Ono

and Pham‟s Asian Americans and the Media is the most vital source of reference for this

thesis; the greatest asset of this book is its comprehensiveness Surveying representations of Asian Americans, Ono and Pham investigate both historical and contemporary images, with both mainstream and independent media examined

13

Xing, Jun Asian America Through the Lens: History, Representations, and Identity Walnut

Creek: AltaMira Press, 1998

Xing, Jun Asian America Through the Lens: History, Representations, and Identity Walnut

Creek: AltaMira Press, 1998

Marchetti, Gina Romance and the Yellow Peril Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of

California Press, 1993

Different from Ono and Pham‟s book, Marchetti‟s Romance and the “Yellow Peril” has

a narrow focus: it works on historical representations of Asians and Asian Americans as the yellow peril in Hollywood fiction, particularly in terms of racial and sexual relations Marchetti‟s work has long become a classic of literature on cinematic representation of Asian and Asian Americans; her observations and arguments about the yellow peril on the screen seem to have been referred to by most of studies of the same subject since its publication in

1993

Another secondary source of importance for this thesis is Encyclopedia of Asian

American Issues Today, a reference book edited by Edith Wen, Chu Chen, and Grace Yoo.15

Containing many chapter-like entries, this book provides overviews of multiple issues of Asian Americans, from the mainstream perception of them as the model minority to representation of them by the media

Last but not least, exploring the questions of representation and identity of a non-white minority, the current study without doubt refers to two highly influential books: Edward

Said‟s Orientalism and Benedict Anderson‟s Imagined Community.16

These works, their ideas

of the “Other” and the imagined community in particular, provide theoretical principles

behind the current study

Summary of the section

This introductory part of the thesis has so far made known to the reader the context in which the current study is conducted It is important to scrutinize representations of Asian Americans as this group is not only often left out from political and social discussion but it is also under-represented in cinema, a medium which largely influences our perceptions of ourselves and members from other groups Focusing on the model minority stereotype, the current study attempts to explore cinematic portrayals of Asian Americans which conform to

15

Wen, Edith, Chen, Chu, and Yoo, Grace J (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Asian American Issues

Today Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2010

16

Said, Edward W Orientalism New York: Random House, 1978

Anderson, Benedict Imagined Community: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of

Nationalism New York: Verso, 1983

as well as those which counter the myth Seven contemporary movies, both mainstream and independent products included, are chosen to make up the corpus to this end

CHAPTER 1 REPRESENTATIONS OF ASIANS AND ASIAN AMERICANS IN tAMERICAN

CINEMA: AN OVERVIEW

This chapter offers a brief overview of representations of Asians and Asian Americans

in American cinema from the early to the contemporary days Its purpose is to provide the reader with background knowledge required for comprehension of the more specific subject to

be discussed in the following chapters, i.e representations of them as the model and model minority Through this chapter, the reader will be acquainted with basic concepts concerning cinematic portrayals of Asian Americans such as Orientalism, the perpetual foreigner, the yellow peril, the model minority, and yellow face

non-1.1 Dominant cinematic representations of Asians and Asian Americans

In their 2009 book on Asian Americans and the media, Ono and Pham argued that historical representations of Asians and Asian Americans have enduring effects which continue to the contemporary time, even with changes in the field of representation, especially after the protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s Thus, it is important to comprehend historical representations of Asians and Asian Americans if we are to understand representations of Asians and Asian Americans, either in the contemporary time or over time This chapter scrutinizes dominant/mainstream cinematic representations of Asians and Asian Americans, including the historical ones The following sections of this chapter provide an overview of Asian and Asian American stereotypes

Stereotypes are simplified images of members of a group.17 It should be noted, however, that stereotypes are not necessarily inaccurate – they may or may not reflect the truth (Hogg and Vaughan), but what makes them problematic is their overgeneralization which leaves no room for individual variations.18 Another negative aspect of stereotypes is their often depicting outgroup members negatively, e.g non-Blacks often see Blacks as unintelligent, criminal, hostile and loud (Devine and Elliot) and thus reinforcing negative prejudice (Hogg

and Vaughan).19 Further, stereotypes are not fixed; that is, “a stereotype can change over time, and the cultural context in which a stereotype forms and functions may change, too A stereotype is a specialized kind of articulation that is the product of an alliance of forces at a given place and time Thus, as forces change, so do stereotypes” (106-107).20

1.1.1 Orientalism: Asians and Asian Americans as the “Other” and perpetual

foreigners

In other to understand cinematic representations of Asian Americans in the mainstream media, it is crucial to comprehend how Asians and Asian Americans are perceived by white Americans, or more generally, by Westerners In broad terms, they have always been regarded

as one of the “Others” of Europe.21 That is, their civilization, cultures, and languages are

thought to be very different from those of the West Further, as Said argued in Orientalism,

the assumptions of the West about the East is not only a product of imagination but also a tool

of domination, in which Asians are regarded as inferior to Westerners Indeed, the observation that white Americans‟ perception of Asians as the Other is consistent across studies about representations of Asians and Asian Americans.22

A manifestation of the idea that Asians are the Other is the forever foreigner stereotype applied to Asian Americans Historically, people of Asian descent were exoticized through their “strange” physical and cultural traits which were unfamiliar to European cultures Contemporarily, Asian Americans are still viewed as inassimilable strangers who do not truly belong to the U.S mainstream society.23 Specifically, despite being American-born citizens, many Asian Americans are still regarded as exotic, mysterious people who have strange

19

Devine, Patricia G., and Elliot, Andrew J “Are racial stereotypes really fading? The

Princeton trilogy revisited.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, vol 11, 1995, pp

1139-1150

20

Ono, Kent A “The Shifting Landscape of Asian Americans in the Media.” Japanese

Journal of Communication Studies, vol 45, no 2, 2017, pp 105-113

21

Campbell, Mary B The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing

Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988

Said, Edward W Orientalism New York: Random House, 1978

22

See Prasso, Okihiro, and Ono and Pham, for example

23

Kartosen, Reza A Screening Asian Americans: The Construction of Asian Americans‟

(Non-Americanness) in Contemporary Popular American Cinema Master‟s Thesis

University of Amsterdam, 2008 Web 15 Jun 2019

customs and behave differently.24 Asian Americans are Orientalized as the Other through their martial arts, eating habits, filial piety as well as other values and norms different from those of the white American culture (Jo & Mast, 1993; Pyke & Dang, 2003) For instance, Mr Miyagi

in The Karate Kid (1984) is a strange, mysterious Japanese in the eyes of all his neighbors

Even to the whites who practice karate, a martial art originated from his homeland, Mr Miyagi is still a foreigner who does not belong to the mainstream society

The most frequent characteristic of Asian Americans on screen as perpetual foreigners is perhaps their strongly accented English, arguably because it is simple to project and can easily

apply to minor, simplistic roles For instance, Do the Right Thing (1989), Falling Down (1993), and Menace II Society (1993) feature presumably immigrant Korean merchants and shopkeepers who speak strongly accented English More recently, in the movie Juno (2007),

the only Asian character expresses her stand against family-planning by saying “Babies want

to be born” in broken English Even Charlie Chan, who can be considered the first Asian American to be depicted positively by Hollywood – indeed, he is a precursor to the model minority myth, despite being constructed as an intelligent, dedicated detective-sergeant, does not speak fluent English The forever foreigner stereotype suggests and perpetuates the prejudice that people of Asian descent can never fully assimilate to American culture, that they are not fully American and can never really belong to the country, regardless of citizenship (Ono; Fong et al.) This stereotype is not without political and social consequences: as Fong et al pointed out, it prevents Asians and Asian Americans from being fully accepted into mainstream American life

1.1.2 Yellow face

Yellow face is a highly noteworthy issue in cinematic representations of Asians and Asian Americans, especially in early Hollywood productions According to Ono and Pham, yellow face can be categorized into two types: explicit and implicit Explicit yellow face is when Asian or Asian American roles are played by non-members of this group, typically by white actors/actresses Implicit yellow face is representation in which Asians or Asian

24

Lyman, Stanford M “The „Yellow Peril‟ Mystique: Origins and Vicissitudes of a Racist

Discourse.” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, 13, 2000, pp 683-747

Americans themselves play the role of a generic Asian person; often, they have makeup, clothing and an exaggerated accent to seem more “authentically Oriental” (Ono and Pham 54)

In historical Hollywood representations of Asians and Asian Americans, white actors/actresses wear clothing and makeup which make them look like people of Asian descent Also, they speak either nonsense or highly affected speech with no real connection to any Asian language This practice of yellow face is the manipulation and defining of the Asian race by non-Asian bodies; it excludes Asian actors/actresses from participating in representation of their own group.25 More importantly, as Lu argued, yellow face obstructs the perception of Asian Americans as “Americans” since it provokes the idea of the “Other” or differences between the Orient (East) and the Occident (West) In other words, explicit yellow face is closely linked to the idea of Orientalism

A classic example of explicit yellow face is the Japanese character of Mr Yunioshi

played by white American actor Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany‟s (1961), in which he

has buck teeth and squinty eyes with thick glasses This case has received extensive critical commentary and review since the theatrical release of the movie It is worth mentioning, however, that Mr Yunioshi is only a minor character that adds racist humor to this romantic

comedy of Hollywood In other movies such as The Good Earth (1938) and Dragon Seed

(1944), Paul Muni, Louise Rainer, and Katharine Hepburn respectively played lead roles, all

of which are Chinese

In the infamous case of The Good Earth (1937), Louise Rainer was chosen for the role

of O-Lan rather than Asian American actress Anna May Wong in spite of Wong‟s popularity and Chinese heritage This decision was mostly due to the Hollywood Production Code‟s anti-miscegenation clause, which prohibited interracial romance on screen (Lu) It is also worth mentioning that at first, Pearl Buck, the author of the original novel on which the movie was

based, wanted to have an all-Chinese/Chinese American cast for The Good Earth Her idea

was first appreciated by the producer Irving Thalberg, who, however, later concluded that

25

Lu, Megan Orientals in Hollywood: Asian American Representation in Early U.S Cinema

MA Thesis Boston University, 2017 Web 20 Jun 2019

American audiences were not ready for such a movie.26 At this point, we see that the relation between the media and the audience is not a one-direction enterprise: the media have the power to shape the public mind, but it is also the public that can affect the creation of media contents

Although the practice of explicit yellow face can still be found in some recent movies,

for example Balls of Fury (2007), and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007),

generally, it has become unpopular since the 1990s In contemporary representations of Asian Americans, it is implicit yellow face that has become more popular Implicit yellow face is not without problems, but compared to explicit yellow face, it has received less attention and criticism

Implicit yellow face is problematic as it requires such actors/actresses to follow a predefined set of ideas about Asianness and neglect their own existential identities and experiences Further, it contributes to the lack of recognition of Asian Americans as a diverse group As Ono and Pham put it, “current practices of yellow face, which are part of the structure of the institution and industry of media production, blur Asian American identity and

deploy cultural essentialism to view „Asian‟ and „Asian American‟ people as „All Seem Identical, Alike, No different‟” (55)

1.1.3 The yellow peril

A very common representation of Asians and Asian Americans in American cinema is the yellow peril, originally understood as the alleged danger of Oriental hordes overwhelming the West According to this stereotype, Asians are able and ready to invade and overtake the nation, damaging the culture, economy, and society of white Americans, who are vulnerable and in danger.27 The yellow peril began with medieval fears of Genghis Khan and Mongolian

26

Hodges, Graham R G Anna May Wong: From Laundryman's Daughter to Hollywood

Legend New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

27

Ono, Kent A “The Shifting Landscape of Asian Americans in the Media.” Japanese

Journal of Communication Studies, vol 45, no 2, 2017, pp 105-113

Fong, Timothy P., Soe, Valerie, and Aquino, Allan “Portrayals in Film and Television.”

Encyclopedia of Asian American Issues Today, edited by Wen-Chu Chen and Grace J Yoo,

ABC-CLIO, 2010, pp 635-650

invasions of Europe and continued with the nineteenth-century influx of eastern Asian laborers who were willing to work for very low wages, thus threatening the earning power

of white European immigrants to the United States On the one hand, the yellow peril stereotype combines racist terror of alien cultures, sexual anxieties, and the belief that the civilized West will be overpowered and enveloped by the “irresistible, dark, occult forces of the East” (Marchetti 2) On the other, it has contributed to the notion that all non-white people are “physically and intellectually inferior, morally suspect, heathen, licentious, disease-ridden, feral, violent, uncivilized, infantile” and thus in need of the guidance of white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant Americans (Marchetti 3) In fact, the prevailing ideology of Western superiority versus Eastern inferiority led to the passage of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and many subsequent anti-Asian laws (Fong et al.)

The yellow peril stereotype has been embedded in the popular imagination since the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, its circulation significantly aided by mass media creations, notably the villainous character of Fu Manchu First introduced as a fictional villain

in a series of novels by British author Sax Rohmer, the insidious Fu Manchu was soon featured widely in television, radio, comics, and especially cinema This character stepped in

Hollywood with a Paramount Pictures early talkie, The Mysterious Dr Fu Manchu (1929)

Over around fifty years, he had been featured in many Hollywood movies, the most infamous

movie being MGM's The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932) starring Boris Karloff and Myrna Loy

Fu Manchu is an ingenious Chinese scientist Indeed, he is called “Dr Fu Manchu.” In

The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), he proudly describes himself as “a doctor of philosophy from

Edinburgh, a doctor of law from Christ's College, [and] a doctor of medicine from Harvard.” His intellect, however, goes hand in hand with madness, brutality, and immorality A calculating, over-ambitious Asian, he has a fervent desire for colonizing the Occident and

never lacks devious plans to this end For example, in The Mask of Fu Manchu, he races to the

tomb of Genghis Khan, aiming to take the emperor‟s sword and mask so that he can proclaim himself the reincarnation of the legendary conqueror and inflame the peoples of Asia and the Middle East into a war to wipe out the “white race.”28 Without doubt, his rivals are

28

Genghis Khan was the founder and first Great Khan of the Mongol Empire In the movie, this name per se can be easily associated with the yellow peril In fact, as mentioned earlier,

Westerners, which polarizes the East and the West During the competition, Fu Manchu conducts many hostile, barbaric acts toward his enemy, including forcing Sir Lionel Barton to lie underneath a gigantic, constantly ringing bell to have him reveal the location of the tomb, making Sheila Barton a human sacrifice, lowering Nayland Smith into a crocodile pit, placing Von Berg between two sets of metal spikes inching toward each other, and making Terry Granville drink secret serum which will make him a permanent slave of his daughter Such diabolical schemes and his supreme purpose of wiping out the “white race” are dramatic demonstrations of the yellow peril; they perpetuate the myth that the Chinese, and more generally, Asians, try to take over the Western world

1.1.4 Gender and sexuality

More often than not, discussions about cinematic representations of Asian Americans go hand in hand with the issue of gender and sexuality Asian and Asian American men and women are portrayed in divergent ways, but usually they are both stereotypically depicted Historical representations of Asian and Asian American men and women correspond to Westerners‟ colonial ideas of them; for instance, men are depicted as sexually undesirable

while women are put in an opposite position

Portrayals of Asian and Asian American men

More often than not, Asian American men are depicted as evil villains or enemy combatants, for example Fu Manchu and more recently, the Viet Cong in the Vietnam War In

Hollywood‟s The Deer Hunter (1978), a Vietnam War movie regarded by Stephen Farber, a famous American film critic, as “the greatest anti-war movie since La Grande Illusion”, the

Viet Cong, i.e the Vietnamese enemies of the white American protagonists, are depicted as incredibly cruel.29 Different from many Vietnam War movies where the depiction of the

enemies takes very short duration of the whole movie, The Deer Hunter spends a considerable

amount of time on the scenes portraying the imagined Russian roulette which Viet Cong

the yellow peril is rooted in medieval fears of Genghis Khan and Mongolian invasions of Europe

29

Bach, Steven Final Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven's Gate, the Film

That Sank United Artists New York: Newmarket Press, 1999

soldiers force their three American captives to play against one another30 In those scenes, Viet Cong soldiers appear as heartless, brutal and inhuman, gambling on the lives of other human beings As John Kleinen commented, “seldom have Orientalism and different variations of “the yellow peril” been so brutally combined” (289).31

Portrayals of Asian men as villainous have continued in the even more recent movies

For instance, Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World‟s End (2007) features Chow Yun-Fat as

Sao Feng an unscrupulous Singaporean pirate who will do anything, even betraying his best friends, to join with the winning Sao Feng wears a queue, a Fu-Manchu style mustache, and long, “mandarin” fingernails He is constructed as an enemy of whites: his crew attacks the Crew of the Black Pearl (the protagonist) – indeed, his ship The Empress has a poor history with Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp); also, Sao Feng attempts to rape the movie‟s heroine, Elizabeth In the original version, Chow is onscreen for twenty minutes; but upon the movie release in China, ten minutes of his footage were trimmed Although no official reason for the censorship was given, unofficial sources within China indicated that such negative stereotypes were offensive to the Chinese people.32

As Fong et al (2010) suggested, the portrayals of Asians as subhuman are perhaps served as a justification for World War II atrocities such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and later conflicts such in Korean and Vietnam From a psychological perspective, though, we suppose that they are also a consequence of the ingrained stereotypes of Asians as the yellow peril At this point, we see a vicious circle of stereotypes perpetuating more stereotypes, and the media,

particularly the cinema, hold much responsible for that

Further, Asian and Asian American men are depicted as either lustful or asexual On the one hand, they are historically portrayed as uncontrollably lascivious toward white women (Fong et al.) Lasciviousness makes them threatening to white females and thus links them to

30

The Russian roulette scenes have received strong criticisms, with many Vietnam War American reporters denouncing them as a lie

31

Kleinen, John “Framing „the Other‟: A Critical Review of Vietnam War Movies and Their

Representation of Asians and Vietnamese.” Asia in Europe, Europe in Asia, edited by Srilata

Ravi, Mario Rutten, and Beng-Lan Goh, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, 2004, pp 267-298 32

“China Gives Bald Pirate the Chop,” Associated Press June 15, 2007,

the yellow peril As Marchetti suggested, the narrative pattern most often associated with Hollywood dramas involving the yellow peril features the rape or threat of rape of a Caucasian woman by a villainous Asian man For example, in an early Hollywood movie, the silent

drama The Cheat (1915), the Asian male character played by Sessue Hayakawa offers a loan

to Edith, a white married woman, in exchange for her virtue.33 However, when Edith wishes to pay back the money, Tori/Arakau rejects her proposal and makes sexual advances toward her, his behavior being projected as sexually aggressive and violent

Figure 1.1 At first, Tori / Arakau is an admirer of white Edith When Edith faints knowing

she has lost $10,000, Tori / Arakau grasps her He grasps her chest when she loses

consciousness…

33In the original version (1915), the Asian character was Tori, a Japanese man played by actor Sessue Hayakawa However, under pressure from the influential Japanese government with its military power at that time, in 1918, Japanese Tori was changed into a Burmese villain named Arakau (Marchetti)

Figure 1.2 … then he kisses her, obviously without her knowledge, let alone consent

On the other hand, Asian and Asian American men are emasculated by the mainstream media, being projected as clumsy and sexless For instance, Charlie Chan, a detective featured

in numerous Hollywood for about twenty years (from the 1930s to the 1950s) is constantly depicted as an asexual Chinese American male character Although Chan is married and has a big family, what the audience see about him is all about his work and never about his personal and sexual life In fact, Chan‟s wife is never featured in the movies

Even Bruce Lee‟s characters cannot escape the stereotype of Asian and Asian American men as asexual In fact, Bruce Lee is considered as one of the most influential martial artist of all time.3435 Despite being one of the most, if not the most, “manly” and virile Asian icon in

Hollywood, in his legendary Enter the Dragon (1973), for instance, Lee is not projected as

34

Rousseau, Robert “The Greatest Martial Artists of All Time.” Liveabout, 24 May 2019,

2019

35

Stets, Michael “The MMA World Pays Tribute to Bruce Lee 40 Years After His Death.”

Bleacher Report, 20 Jul 2013,

one who has interest in women as his white and black costars Indeed, as Fong et al pointed out, Lee is probably one of the very few sexually chaste action heroes in Hollywood

The mentioned movies are made by white American directors Notably, Eat a Bowl of

Tea (1989) by Asian American Wayne Wang also explores, or exploits, the theme of male

sexual deprivation and sexual frustration In this movie, the first passage is dedicated to the exposition of the lives of the first-generation Chinese American immigrants who, due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, are not allowed to bring their wives with them to the United States They are shown as men who know only work and male gatherings The central male character, however, is Ben Loy, son of one of such immigrants‟ Before his trip to China, Ben appears as

a sexually active man; he even dances with a beautiful white American woman while dozens

of other Chinese American young men just stand there, desperately looking at the only Chinese woman who is singing on stage During his trip to China, the portrayal of Ben does not lack sexual aspects, either: he passionately kisses Mei Oi, whom he will soon marry and bring to the United States Soon after their wedding, however, Ben is depicted with sexual frustration and dysfunction: he cannot get it right with his wife; in other words, he is incapable

of making a woman, and himself, sexually satisfied Although his incapability is presumably a consequence of his pressure to make Mei Oi pregnant and toward the end of the movie, Ben is finally able to satisfy his wife and they have a baby, his sexual dysfunction is highlighted throughout most of the movie Such a theme, arguably, is rarely found in movies about white Americans This example illustrates that Asian and Asian American men are emasculated not only by white filmmakers but also by Asian American ones themselves Moreover, the emasculation is applied not only to old immigrants but also to young Asian Americans

Portrayals of Asian and Asian American women

Historically, there are two common stereotypes of Asian and Asian American women: the dragon lady and the lotus blossom (Fong et al.) Emerging in the early twentieth century, the dragon lady stereotype is typically seen in roles performed by Chinese American actress

Anna May Wong in such classics as The Thief of Bagdad (1924), Shanghai Express (1932), and Daughter of the Dragon (1931) According to this stereotype, the dragon lady is a sly,

untrustworthy Asian woman who uses her sexuality as a weapon to deceive and get control of unfortunate men (Fong et al.) More recently, the dragon lady stereotype can be found in many

Hollywood movies starring Lucy Liu, including Payback (1999) by Mel Gibson and Kill Bill:

Vol 1 (2003) by Quentin Tarantino

The other widespread stereotype of Asian American women is the lotus blossom, also known as the geisha girl or the china doll (Fong et al.) According to this stereotype, Asian women are seen as sexy, submissive, and willing to become partners of white men As Fong et

al pointed out, this stereotype became especially popular after World War II, during which many U.S servicemen first encountered Asian people The lotus blossom is projected in such

movies as Love Is a Many Splendored Thing (1955), The World of Suzie Wong (1960), A Girl

Named Tamiko (1962), and You Only Live Twice (1967) More recently, this stereotype has

been perpetuated by such moves as Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Balls of Fury (2007)

When it comes to romantic and sexual relationships, while Asian and Asian American men are constructed as sexually undesirable suitors for women of their own group, let alone white ones, Asian and Asian American women are portrayed as attractive to white men with their softness, compliance, dependence, and submission As Kang argues, such stereotypes are products of the colonial time; they are reflections of the white colonizers‟ fantasy, which, however, has real effects on the psychology of Asians and Asian Americans.36

1.1.5 The model minority

A more recent representation of Asian Americans is the model minority That is, they are depicted as high achievers who are well-educated, well-behaved, and successful assimilators to the mainstream American society In American movies, this stereotype is typically manifested with well-paid professions such as doctors and accountants Being the focus of the current study, the model minority stereotype will be discussed in detail in chapter

2

1.2 The Asian American independent cinema

The Asian American independent cinema was born in the early 1970s as part of the civil rights and student movements of the 1960s and 1970s, out of political necessity to fight

36Kang, Laura “The Desiring of Asian Female Bodies: Interracial Romance and Cinematic

Subjection.” Screening Asian Americans, edited by Peter X Feng, Rutgers University Press,

2002, pp 71-98

institutional racism and invisibility within Hollywood (Okada; Soe).37 Before that, Asians and Asian Americans had limited access to mainstream media production; indeed, it was white Americans who had the power to represent this ethnic group, about whom they knew little or nothing (Ono) This film movement was critical in the history of Asian and Asian American representations as it marked the birth of their self-representations

Most of the early movies made by Asian Americans themselves, however, were circulated within the Asian American community only It was not until 1982 that the Asian American independent film became recognizable with the box office popularity of Wayne

Wang‟s Chan Is Missing.38

This movie, indeed, was the first Asian American feature narrative movie to gain both theatrical distribution and critical acclaim outside of the Asian American community (Soe; Xing).39 As the title suggests, the movie is a play on Charlie Chan, the popular Chinese American detective of the mainstream American cinema.Chan Is Missing turns the Charlie Chan detective trope upside down by making “Chan” the missing

person to be found by the two protagonists, Jo and Steve Through their search for Chan, the movie evokes a fractured, even contradictory portrait of the famous detective as a way to challenge stereotypes about the homogeneity of the Asian American community.

Chan Is Missing, without doubt, helped bring Asian American movies to a broader

audience It has since been followed by other successful independent Asian American

productions, including A Great Wall (1984), Mississippi Masala (1991), The Wedding

Banquet (1993), Picture Bride (1994), and Better Luck Tomorrow (2002), all of which were

nationally distributed (Soe) At this point, it is practical to mention that although most of independent Asian American movies are independent in nature, some have crossed over into the mainstream (Ono), and the mentioned movies are good instances As for filmmakers, Ang

Lee and Justin Lin, the directors of The Wedding Banquet and Better Luck Tomorrow

respectively, are examples of Asian American directors who started their career as an indie

37

Soe, Valerie “Independent Film.” Encyclopedia of Asian American Issues Today, edited by

Wen-Chu Chen and Grace J Yoo, ABC-CLIO, 2010, pp 657-662

38

Feng, Peter X Identities in Motion: Asian American Film and Video Durham & London:

Duke University Press, 2002

39

Xing, Jun Asian America Through the Lens: History, Representations, and Identity Walnut

Creek: AltaMira Press, 1998

filmmakers but later made blockbusters or at least very popular movies to the general public

In fact, Ang Lee is the name behind the famous Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Life of Pi (2012), and Justin Lin behind several movies of The Fast and the Furious franchise

Briefly, the Asian American independent cinema in its early days was an anti- and colonial effort which strived to challenge and destabilize the long-standing control of Hollywood over representations of Asians and Asian Americans From time to time, however,

de-it has grown to explore a wider range of themes and subjects Some Asian American movies

focus on political issues such as racism and homophobia (Muni to the Marriage, 2004) and mainstream filmic representations of Asian Americans (Hollywood Chinese, 2007) Others cultivate the field of identity from cultural/ethnic identity (The Flipside, 2000) to gender one (Saving Face, 2004)

Further, there exist movies made by Asian American directors which do not seem to concern Asian Americans‟ issues related to their own ethnicity or cultural heritage (Soe) For

instance, despite being set in an Asian predominated city, Colma: The Musical (2006)

concentrates on universal rites of passage such as relationship problems, party-crashing, and

home leaving The Motel (2005), in spite of the Chinese origin of the protagonist, seems to

focus on his own coming-of-age story rather than such themes as culture, ethnic identity, and race relations

Nevertheless, it should be noted that contemporarily, central to Asian American independent film is the effort to challenge the model minority myth (Ono) “Such films not only challenge the view that Asians and Asian Americans live unproblematic and successful lives but also addresses the complexity of Asian and Asian Americanness, given their incredible diversity and demographic breadth” (110) This subject is to be discussed further in Chapter 2 and Chapter 4 of the current thesis

1.3 Conclusion of the chapter

This chapter has so far provided an overview of representations of Asians and Asian Americans in American cinema Members of this group have generally depicted in mainstream American movies as perpetual foreigners, the yellow peril, and the model minority Further, Asian and Asian American men are typically constructed on the screen as

villainous, wicked, lustful on the one hand and asexual on the other Regarding their female counterparts, two stereotypical images of them are the dragon lady (the sly woman who uses her sexuality to deceive and control men) and the lotus blossom (the sexy, submissive woman who is willing to become partners of white men) When it comes to romantic and sexual relationships, while Asian / Asian American men are typically constructed as sexually undesirable suitors for Asian and Asian American women, let alone white ones, Asian and Asian American women are often portrayed as attractive to white men with their softness, compliance, and submission With regard to movie production, representations of Asians and Asian Americans are marked by yellow face, the practice of either having Asian and Asian American roles played by non-members of this group (explicit yellow face) or making Asians and Asian Americans themselves play the role of a generic Asian person by following a predefined set of ideas about Asianness (implicit yellow face)

This chapter has also reviewed the Asian American independent cinema, which is significant as it enables self-representations of this community Emerging as an effort to defy and destabilize the long-standing control of Hollywood over representations of Asians and Asian Americans, it has, however, gradually grown to explore a wider range of themes and subjects, including those which do not concern Asian American ethnicity and cultural heritage Nevertheless, as argued by Kent A Ono, central to the contemporary Asian American independent film is the effort to challenge the model minority myth This is a departure point for a substantial part of the following chapters, chapter 4 in particular

CHAPTER 2 THE MODEL MINORITY MYTH

Following the previous chapter, this chapter directly deals with the model minority myth, the focus of the current study The myth is first introduced and discussed in sociological terms, then in cinematic terms Through this chapter, the reader will be able to form a general picture of the issue in question, which will be developed in a more concrete, detailed, and vivid way in chapters 3

2.1 The model minority myth

The term “model minority” was first used popularly by the sociologist William Petersen

in a New York Times Magazine published on January 9, 1966 In the article “Success Story:

Japanese American Style,” Petersen praised Japanese Americans for their successful assimilation into mainstream American culture One year later, a similar article about Chinese

Americans was run in US News and World Report.40 By the 1980s, the model minority myth was already ingrained in mainstream American consciousness, with such popular magazines

as Newsweek, The New Republic, Fortune, Parade, and Time publishing many stories about

the success of Asian Americans in schools and society (Kwon and Au) Much of this discourse, as Okada pointed out, followed the 1965 Immigration Act, which abandoned discriminatory policies toward the Asian population that wished to immigrate to the United States

According to the model minority myth, Asian Americans are more educationally and economically successful than other minority groups in the United States such as blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans They are perceived as hard-working, intelligent, and self-sufficient Also, they are supposed to be well-behaved, if not submissive, assimilated

40 Kwon, Hyeyoung, and Au, Wayne “Model Minority Myth.” Encyclopedia of Asian

American Issues Today, edited by Wen-Chu Chen and Grace J Yoo, ABC-CLIO, 2010, pp

221-230

members of the mainstream American society Thus, their way to success is considered as a

“model” for other groups to follow.41

Further, the model minority myth poses a compatibility, if not identity, between key elements of Asian and Anglo-American cultures (Okihiro) As William Caudill and George

De Vos suggested, “there seems to be a significant compatibility between the value systems found in the culture of Japan and the value systems found in American middle class culture.”42Specifically, they are work ethic, education, family values, and self-help (Okihiro) In other words, through the model minority myth, values of WASP, middle-class Americans are promoted

The model minority myth is problematic as it renders Asian Americans‟ hardship invisible as well as negatively affects race relations between Asian Americans and other ethnic groups Although it is true that certain Asian Americans are successful, many others face various problems, for example poverty, lack of health care, and difficulties in integrating into the American society Indeed, many Asian Americans, especially Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders, live near or below the poverty line and often struggle to survive (Fong et al.) In addition, sixty percent of Asian Americans are foreign-born; language barriers and cultural differences, not to mention the “forever foreigner” stereotype, may bring them challenges in merging into the larger society (Wen, Chen, and Yoo)

Further, according to the U.S census in 2000, more than 12 percent of Asian Americans

in the United States were under the poverty level, and the numbers were higher in certain communities.43 On a smaller scale, a 2014 survey by the NYC Center for Economic Opportunity reported that 26.6 percent of Asian Americans in New York City lived below the city‟s poverty threshold.44

At this point, it is worth mentioning that a critical issue related to

41 Chen, Sucheng Asian Americans: An Interpretive History Woodbridge: Twayne

Publishers, 1991

42 Caudill, William, and De Vos, George “Achievement, Culture and Personality: The Case of

the Japanese Americans.” American Anthropologist, vol 58, 1956, pp 1102-26

43

Sacramento, Jocyl, and De la Cruz, Aristel “Poverty.” Encyclopedia of Asian American

Issues Today, edited by Wen-Chu Chen and Grace J Yoo, ABC-CLIO, 2010, pp 149-156

44Yam, Kimberly “Asian Americans Have Highest Poverty Rate in NYC, But Stereotypes Make the Issue Invisible.” Huffpost, 8 May 2017, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/asian-american-poverty-

the model minority is Asian Americans being often treated as a homogeneous group whereas

in fact, they are a diverse population The Chinese American community, for example, has members who work in the field of science, engineering, law, business, and even the arts, sports, and politics.45 It is Southeast Asians who are more prone to poverty as many of them are recent immigrants and refugees with occupational discrimination as well as limited English proficiency and education, which restrict their access to employment and upward social mobility (Sacramento and De la Cruz) That is not to say, however, that all Chinese Americans are well-off and all Southeast-Asian Americans are unsuccessful For example, a

2014 study by Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou found that fewer than 20 percent of the born Chinese adults in Los Angeles worked as lawyers, doctors or engineers or had a professional job of any kind This study also reported that the educational attainment of the second-generation Chinese and Vietnamese were strikingly similar despite the diverse

Data that overlook ethnic subgroups within the generic Asian American community keep contributing to the myth of the model minority For instance, according to the U.S Census Bureau‟s American Community Survey in 2007, 49 percent of Asian Americans have

a bachelor‟s degree compared to 28 percent of the total U.S population for those 25 years and older Nevertheless, this rate of achievement varies widely by ethnic subgroup, from 11 percent for Laotian Americans to 71 percent for Taiwanese Americans.47 Despite the diversity within the Asian American community, the media and the public tend to focus on Chinese and

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6hhZwDVA8FATJ_Zx8UYOFRiZ0tHsShnq9XqxZg3MVf4LtxKxQOdMF53UaICjS58eZkR

45

Kwong, Peter, and Chen, Edith Wen-Chu “Chinese Americans.” Encyclopedia of Asian

American Issues Today, edited by Wen-Chu Chen and Grace J Yoo, ABC-CLIO, 2010, pp

15-23

46

Lee, Jennifer, and Zhou, Min The Asian American Achievement Paradox New York:

Russell Sage Foundation, 2015

47

Hune, Shirley, and Park, Julie J “Educational Trends and Issues.” Encyclopedia of Asian

American Issues Today, edited by Wen-Chu Chen and Grace J Yoo, ABC-CLIO, 2010, pp

169-179

Japanese Americans, and increasingly Korean and Asian Indian Americans, in terms of education and achievement (Hune and Park)

From the psychological perspective, the model minority myth is problematic for Asian Americans as it burdens them with the urge to live up to expectations despite their hardship In fact, Asian Americans are prone to internalize the notion of the model minority, partly because it is a positive stereotype As for Asian American students in particular, they often feel that they have to excel in math, science, and other subjects.48 Concentrating on success and ignoring weakness, struggles, and failures, the model minority stereotype makes it more difficult for poor, uneducated, and ill Asian Americas, making their problems remain unsolved, and mental illness can be engendered (Wen, Chen, and Yoo)

The model minority myth not only contributes to the overlooking of Asian Americans‟ difficulties but it also acts as a tool fighting against other minor groups such as African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans Even when they are encountered by problems, according to the myth, Asian Americans will work it out by themselves rather than ask the government to act By saying “Look, Asian Americans are racial minorities, but they are not complaining, and they are succeeding, so get to work!”, the myth helps ignore problems faced

by such racial minorities.49 Further, it helps obscure racism with the argument that if Asian Americans can thrive, all minorities have the potential to succeed according to the capitalist, thus racism does not truly exist (Ono; Okada) Indeed, in the 1960s and 1970s, it was used excessively to discredit the protests and demands for social justice of other minorities.50 Those reasons, together with alleged economic threats posed by Asian Americans, have triggered racial crimes against Asian Americans

A supreme example of intense race relations related to the model minority myth is the murder of Vincent Chin, a hate crime That is, on the night of June 19, 1982, while celebrating

48

Lee, Stacey J Unraveling the “Model Minority” Stereotype: Listening to Asian American

Youth New York: Teachers College Press, 1996.

49Osajima, Keith “Asian Americans as the Model Minority: An Analysis of the Popular Press

Image in the 1960s and 1980s.” Reflections on Shattered Windows: Promises and Prospects

for Asian American Studies, edited Gary Y Okihiro et al., Washington State University Press,

1988, pp 165-174

50

Suzuki, Bob H “Asian-American as the Model Minority.” Change, November, 1989, pp 13- 19

his bachelor party in Detroit, Michigan, Vincent Chin, a 27-year-old Chinese American who worked as a draftsman at Efficient Engineering, an automotive supplier, and as a waiter at a restaurant on weekends, Chin encountered two white auto workers, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz The two parties had not known each other, but Ebens allegedly said to Chin,

“It's because of you little motherfuckers that we're out of work,” which ignited a fight.51

After Ebens, Nitz, Chin and his friends were thrown out of the club, the fight continued in the parking area Ebens and Nitz later searched the neighborhood for the second party, and outside of a McDonald‟s, Nitz held Chin while Ebens repeatedly struck Chin in the head with

a baseball bat Chin lost consciousness and died four days later

At that time, the American auto industry was declining as the recession destroyed jobs across the country while the presence of Japanese auto manufacturers was growing in the U.S (Wang) In other words, Ebens and Nitz blamed Chin for the success of Japan‟s auto industry, which allegedly results in loss of their own jobs As Wu pointed out, “before Asian-Americans were seen as model minorities, we were also perpetual foreigners Taken together, these perceptions can lead to resentment And resentment can lead to hate.”52

In short, by exaggerating the successes of Asian Americans, the model minority myth intensifies race relations between Asian Americans and other groups, including white Americans

2.2 The model minority myth in American cinema

The model minority stereotype came to the American mainstream consciousness in the 1960s, yet Charlie Chan, a character who first appeared on the American screen in 1931, can

be regarded as a precursor to this stereotype.53 Unlike Fu Manchu, Charlie Chan is a sergeant willing to serve the United States A social servant, Chan is “successful even as he is disempowered” (Ono and Pham 82) As Jachinson Chan pointed out, Charlie Chan

51 Wang, Frances K “Who Is Vincent Chin? The History and Relevance of a 1982 Killing.”

NBC News, 15 Jun 2017,

52 Wu, Frank H “Why Vincent Chin Matters.” New York Times, 22 Jun 2012,

assimilates into mainstream American culture by moving from a class status to a middle-class professional one [He] symbolizes the American dream of success: a minority who is allowed to interact with a predominantly white American society, living a life of relative economic comfort, and rasing a nuclear family (51)

working-It is also worth noting, however, that on the one hand, Chan is depicted as a successful Asian American; on the other hand, he is portrayed as a “forever foreigner”: it is true that Chan is intelligent, but his English keeps being broken, and it does not improve over time In other words, successful and dedicated as he may be, Chan is never able to fully integrate into the mainstream American society

Charlie Chan is an example of the early version of the model minority stereotype; that

is, Asian Americans are represented as intelligent, competent, and dependable, yet they are obedient and not threatening to the dominant white American society More recently, the model minority stereotype is manifested by the image of smart students who are from good families, employees of high-paying professions such as journalists, doctors, lawyers, scientists, accountants, and entrepreneurs, law abiding citizens, as well as quiet people living

in affluent suburbs (Ono and Pham; Fong et al.; Ono; Kartosen) Such professions, indeed, can

be seen in a wide range of movies about Asian Americans and notably, even in those made by Asian Americans themselves For instance, Tracy Tzu, the main female character in Michael

Cimino‟s Year of the Dragon (1985), is a television reporter, and Wilhelmina, one of the two female leads in Alice Wu‟s Saving Face (2004), is a successful surgeon It should be noted,

however, that characters conforming to the model minority stereotype are not always lead roles as in the mentioned examples On the contrary, they are often supporting characters with little depth or development (Fong et al.) This fact, in turn, is linked to the reality of Asian Americans‟ under-representation in the mainstream American cinema

The success of Asian Americans is also manifested by their excellent academic

performance For example, in Akeelah and the Bee (2006), the chief opponent of the lead

character Akeelah is Dylan Chu, an Asian American boy who can learn twenty times faster than Akeelah Notably, Akeelah is a black American; that her opponent is an Asian American rather than a white indicates how cinema may negatively contributes to the race relations between minorities in the United States

On the negative side, although Asian Americans are described as excellent students, they are also often portrayed as nerdy, over-studious, and socially dull.54 This image links them with the portrayal of Asian American men as asexual and emasculated (Kartosen)

2.3 The model minority and the yellow peril

At first glance, it seems that the model minority myth has come to replace the yellow peril stereotype While the pre-1950 yellow peril discourse “help Christians to understand why they are not pagans, Americans to understand why the are not Europeans nor Native Americans, and whites to understand why they are unlike people of color” (Marchetti 8), the post-1960s model minority myth pitted Asians against other minorities by using the socioeconomic logic of ideal citizenship (Okada)

Nevertheless, at a deeper level, there is a close connection between the model minority and the yellow peril (Okihiro; Kawai; Ono and Pham).55 As Okihiro argued, “the concepts of the yellow peril and the model minority … form a seamless continuum” (141) That is, on the one hand, as mentioned earlier, the model minority myth indirectly promotes values of WASP, middle-class Americans On the other hand, Asian Americans‟ success can be a threat

to white Americans by posing a challenge to the relationship of majority over minority: those minority members now have the privileges that have been enjoyed exclusively by majority members As Okihiro put it,

Asians can work too hard, study overmuch, stick together and form a racial bloc, and thereby “flood” [American] markets and displace workers, “flood” [American] schools and displace students, and “flood” [American] land with concentrations of Chinatown, Japantowns, Koreatowns, Little Saigons, Manilatowns “Model” Asians exhibit the same singleness of purpose, patience and endurance, cunning, fanaticism, and group loyalty characteristic of Marco Polo‟s Mongol soldiers, and Asian workers and students, maintaining themselves at little expense and almost robot-like, labor and study for hours on end without human needs for relaxation, fun, and pleasure, and M.I.T becomes “Made in Taiwan,” and “Stop the Yellow

54 Pyke, Karen, and Dang, Tran “„FOB‟ and „Whitewashed‟: Identity and Internalized Racism

Among Second Generation Asian Americans.” Qualitative Sociology, 26,2003, pp 147-173

55 Kawai, Yuko “Stereotyping Asian Americans: The Dialectic of the Model Minority and the

Yellow Peril.” Howard Journal of Communication, vol 16, 2005, pp 109-130

Hordes” appears as college campus graffiti, bumper stickers, and political slogans” (141)

In a few words, characteristics of the model minority can pose threats to white privilege, which makes it closely related to the yellow peril In addition, on the one hand, the model minority alleviates the alleged danger of the yellow peril; on the other hand, if taken too far, it can become the yellow peril (Okihiro)

2.4 Counter-visions of the model minority

As discussed earlier in this chapter, the model minority myth, although depicting Asian Americans with positive characteristics, is problematic in various ways and thus is not without negativity In response to such a stereotypical representation, Asian American directors themselves have projected negative images of this minority (Okada) Such representations can

be regarded as counter-images of the model minority and will be discussed in detail in Chapter

4 of the current thesis

2.5 Conclusion of the chapter

In brief, the model minority myth describes Asian Americans as hard-working, intelligent, successful, and well-behaved members of the mainstream American society, their way to success considered as a “model” for other groups to follow Throughout this chapter, it has been underlined that this stereotype does more harm than good to Asian Americans Not only does the model minority myth burden Asian Americans with the pressure to live up to expectations, but it also renders their hardship invisible Further, by exaggerating the successes of Asian Americans, the myth intensifies race relations between them and other groups, including white Americans

Problematic as it may be, the model minority myth has been reproduced and perpetuated

by the mainstream American cinema In response, Asian American directors themselves have projected negative images of this minority, i.e counter-images of the model minority Such images and counter-images will be both examined in the two next chapters through analyses

of the movie corpus

CHAPTER 3 IMAGES OF THE MODEL MINORITY

In this chapter, The Joy Luck Club (1993), The Wedding Banquet (1993), and Crazy

Rich Asians (2017) are analyzed in ways that show how they conform to the model minority

stereotype As for Better Luck Tomorrow (2002) and Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle

(2004), although they have more to do with counter-images of the model minority, such images are based on those conforming to the myth Thus, the latter images in those movies are also examined in this chapter

3.1 Overview of the movie corpus

The Joy Luck Club (1993)

Based on Amy Tan‟s novel of the same title, The Joy Luck Club (1993) tells the life

stories of four Chinese American immigrant women and their second-generation daughters Although the movie was financed by Hollywood, it was directed by Wayne Wang, who is

widely known for his many successful independent movies, most notably Chan Is Missing (1982) The second Hollywood movie, after Flower Drum Song (1961), to feature an all-Asian cast, The Joy Luck Club won Casting Society of America‟s 1994 Award for Best Casting for

Feature Film, Drama The movie has been positively received by both critics and the public

In fact, The Joy Luck Club has long become a classic of Asian American film

The Wedding Banquet (1993)

As The Joy Luck Club, Wedding Banquet (1993) was made by a director of Asian

descent, Ang Lee Independently financed, the movie was marketed and distributed in the mainstream, though It features a gay Taiwanese immigrant, Wai-Tung Gao, who lives with his partner Simon, a white American Under the pressure to have a family of his own to please his parents, Wai-Tung marries Wei-Wei, a mainland Chinese immigrant The marriage is supposed to help Wai-Tung hide his homosexuality from his parents and get Wei-Wei a green card While Wai-Tung conforms to the image of the model minority, Wei-Wei is by no means

a successful person of Asian descent in America

Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

Based on the 2013 novel of the same name by Kevin Kwan, the romantic comedy Crazy

Rich Asians (2018) follows Rachel Chu, a Chinese American professor who travels with her

boyfriend, Nick Young, to his homeland, Singapore The story unfolds as Rachel discovers Nick‟s family is among the richest, if not the richest, in Singapore

Crazy Rich Asian is directed by Jon M Chu, an American of Chinese and Taiwanese

descent It features an all-Asian cast; in fact, it had been 25 years since Hollywood last

produced a movie with such a cast, The Joy Luck Club (1993) Crazy Rich Asians was highly

anticipated partly for this reason, and partly because it was widely advertised, distributed by Warner Bros Not only did it ignite a series of magazine articles on Hollywood‟s

representation of Asians and Asian Americans, but the movie also succeeded in both critical

and commercial terms, especially the latter one

Better Luck Tomorrow (2002)

Better Luck Tomorrow is considered as the peak of Asian American independent film

(Okada) A crime-drama movie, Better Luck Tomorrow tells the story of a group of Asian

American over-achieving high school students who get bored with their lives and decide to do petty crime as well as experience material excess It was directed by Justin Lin, a Taiwanese American who attended film school at UCLA Independently made, the movie, however, was later acquired and distributed nationally by MTV Films In fact, it gained studios‟ attention after a heated discussion following one of its screenings at the Sundance Film Festival That

is, in a Q&A session, an audience member asked Justin Lin whether he thought it was irresponsible to depict Asian Americans in such a negative way In response, Roger Ebert,

who gave Better Luck Tomorrow a full four-star rating in the Chicago Sun-Times, got angry.56

He stood up and said: “What I find very offensive and condescending about your statement is nobody would say to a bunch of white filmmakers, „How could you do this to your people?‟ […] This film has the right to be about this people, and Asian Americans have the right to be whatever the hell they want to be They do not have to 'represent' their people.” Ebert‟s vocal

56

Roger Ebert (1942-2013) was a prominent, if not the most influential and powerful,

American film critic He wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013

In 1975, he became the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism

approval helped Better Luck Tomorrow attract interest from big studios, namely Miramax,

Fox, and MTV Films; and finally it became the first movie ever purchased by MTV Films.57

Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004)

A stoner comedy directed by Danny Leiner, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle

follows two Asian Americans, Harold Lee (John Cho) and Kumar Patel (Kal Penn), along their way to a White Castle restaurant after smoking marijuana Different from the four

movies previously mentioned in this chapter, this movie was written and directed by

non-Asian Americans It teases the idea of the model minority by showing common images of this stereotype and then projecting their subversions in the characters of Harold, a Korean American, and Kumar, an Indian American Interestingly, the character of Harold was based

on a real-life friend, Harold Lee, of screenwriters Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg.58 Not

only did the movie enjoy positive reception by critics but it also had sequels, Harold & Kumar

Escape From Guantanamo Bay (2008) and A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas (2011)

Gran Torino (2008)

Similar to Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, Gran Torino was written and directed

by non-Asian Americans In fact, its director was the famous Clint Eastwood, who was also one of its producers and main actors The narrative tells the story of Walt (Eastwood), a Korean War veteran who has just lost his wife and been alienated from his children and grandchildren The second lead role is Thao Vang Lor, a Hmong American neighbor of Walt Under the pressure from his cousin‟s gang, Thao tries to steal Walt‟s precious Gran Torino but without success At first, Walt gets wrathful, but gradually he develops a good relationship

57 MTV News Staff “Better Luck Tomorrow Gets People Talking About Asian American

Stereotypes.” MTV News, 3 Apr 2003,

“Better Luck Tomorrow.” National Public Radio 23 Jan 2003,

with Thao and his Hmong American family In fact, Gran Torino is the first Hollywood movie

to feature Hmong Americans; its cast has a considerable number of Hmong American cast members, including amateur ones On the whole, the movie has enjoyed both commercial and critic success

3.2 Images of the model minority

As mentioned in the previous chapter, the model minority myth is manifested through Asian Americans‟ excellent academic performance and economic success, including well-paying professions, as well as their accomplishment in overcoming difficulties and integrating into the mainstream American society In the following sections, each of those aspects as found in the chosen movies will be presented and discussed

3.2.1 Excellent students

In Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, Harold meets a group of Asian / Asian

American students at Princeton University The name of this university itself indicates academic excellence of Asian Americans: they are present in top universities As for Rose

Hsu, one of the four daughters in The Joy Luck Club, she first meets her husband as they study

together at college The husband is, in fact, born into an aristocratic family that has run a publishing empire for years, of which he will later take charge Studying with such a person, Rose arguably goes to a prestigious university

In fact, not only Asian American college students are associated with outstanding

performance; young children are also projected that way In The Joy Luck Club, little Waverly

and June are portrayed as talented primary school pupils, or at least that is what their mothers try to make them be Waverly is an undefeatable chess player: she beats her white male opponent, with no difficulties, to win the championship As for little June, she plays the piano with great confidence, and she also takes part in a talent competition Both Waverly and June are a great source of pride for their mothers

Figure 3.1 Little Waverly plays chess against a white male peer In response to a move which

her opponent is confident about, and under the alleged pressure of time, she looks calm, cool,

and confident The white boy and his move are not at all a challenge to her

Figure 3.2 Little Waverly is featured on a Life Magazine‟s cover The title reads “Could

Bobby Fischer defeat the Chinese Terror?” While the white boy is mentioned with his own name, Waverly is referred to with a label concerning her ethnicity, or the model minority